


What we do to get by

by kawuli



Series: Please feel free to take this personally [4]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Drug Use, Gen, Victors (Hunger Games) - Freeform, bad coping strategies, references to forced prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-09 02:48:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5522606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kawuli/pseuds/kawuli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>District Seven is silence, cold and snow and trees and a house that's all too quiet. It's bad memories and bad nights and too-long days all on her own.</p><p>It's no wonder Johanna will take any escape she can find, anything that promises to make it stop hurting, even if only for a little while.</p><p>The only problem is the comedown.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What we do to get by

**Author's Note:**

> Occurs before [Finally Breathe](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5473502), not long after Johanna's family is killed.

The silence is the worst part.

She's got a new house, not like there's a shortage in the Victors Village in District Seven. She didn't have much she cared about in the old one.

But the only sound here is the echo of her feet on the wood floors. The Village is far enough from the paper mill and the sawmill that the noise is filtered out by the trees. The river is too broad and too far. There's only five of them here, and nobody's outside in the snow.

They've left her alone, finally. In her new house, with a fridge stocked with easy-to-heat food by the crazy bachelor Seven Victors who've never known what to do with the firecracker dropped into their midst, much less the broken-down screaming mess she's been lately.

Blight's left the pantry well-stocked with good scotch, and at night, when she's tired of pacing the floors, determined there's nothing worth watching on TV, and it's too cold to leave the house, she sets the bottle and the glass next to the couch and pours a drink.

And then the phone rings, and it's Julius, and he's giggling and there's noise in the background, music thumping hard, and he's out of breath, yelling into the phone. "Johanna!" he says, giddy. "You have to come, tomorrow's my birthday and we're having the best party!"

Johanna looks around. "What time is it?" she asks, because it's dark, but it's winter, it's usually dark, that's not very helpful.

"What time is it?" she hears him yell, and someone calls back and he shrieks. "It's 1:30!" he says, "It's already my birthday!"

Johanna rolls her eyes. "You're drunk," she says, guessing.

"Yeah, so are you," he shoots back. She looks at the bottle on the table, thinks about it.

"Yeah, guess so," she says, and it's funny, suddenly.

"So go find a train!" his voice goes whiny, and Johanna's laughing so hard she has to wait to catch her breath before she answers.

"Alright, alright," she says, and she's so relieved to have something to do, someplace to go, that she doesn't even care that she's going to have to deal with fucking Victors' Affairs to get a train pass on such short notice. "I'll be there as soon as I can."

The operator at Victors' Affairs is alarmingly perky for--well, for any hour, really, much less fucking 2 AM. "You're in luck!" she chirps, "You'll have to take the freight line to the 6-10 junction, but if you leave at 3:30 from Seven, you can catch the 5 AM train from Six at the junction and be here by 9:00!"

"Great," Johanna says, "Can you book me a room? And have a stylist come by at, let's say 3PM?"

"Of course!" the girl on the line giggles. "I'll have a driver meet you at the station!"

"Great," Johanna says, and she hangs up, looks around, and shakes her head, still laughing just a little.

Julius throws the best parties in the Capitol, and everyone thinks she's crazy for liking him, and her dad hated him and hated that Johanna went to his parties, and let's be honest, didn't even really like Johanna's existence, generally, but he's not here, so that saves a fight.

And her stomach drops at that, churning back into guilt and mess and fuck it, she's going to a party and she's going to enjoy herself, so she pours another drink and goes to clean up for the train.

\--

It's funny, how perspective works. Johanna thought she hated the Capitol, but compared to the snow-covered smothering silence in Seven, the noise is a relief.

The driver's there, just like Victors' Affairs said he would be, and he doesn't react more than a few quick blinks, even though Johanna's well aware she looks like shit. It's 9AM, she's been dozing on the train, she's somewhere between drunk and hungover and everything is bright, loud, and confusing. When she gets to her room she takes the hangover drugs that're stocked in the medicine cabinet, downs them with fancy bottled water, and passes out until the stylist knocks on the door. _He_ gasps in horror, and Johanna rolls her eyes.

"I'm bereaved, haven't you heard?" she snipes, then grins when the stylist's face falls in shock. She orders coffee and chocolate chip pancakes while he draws a hot bath in her bathroom, drinks coffee while she soaks in something that, because she has to represent Seven even on her own time, smells like pine and menthol. Which is stupid, because Seven is too cold for eucalyptus, they grow a few in Eleven for cheap lumber, but Seven, wood, trees, whatever. People think they're clever.

Once she's bathed and waxed and wrapped in a robe, she eats and listens to the stylist tell her who's been seen where and all the gossip she gives less than no fucks about but that helps kill the time.

When he's done she looks like a different person. Good.

They like her hair, long and thick and dark, and the stylist's pulled it back from her face like she asked, but lets it fall in a long curled ponytail down her back, brushing against her shoulder blades when she turns. Her dress is hanging behind the door still, even with all the work it's still too early for dinner and drinks, at least for Julius.

She calls him around seven, figuring it's the earliest she can get away with without getting called hopelessly rural.

"Johanna!" he says, and just the sound of his voice makes her laugh. Capitol-fake, excited about everything and nothing and without a care in the world. "I'm so glad you made it!"

"Yeah, well," Johanna said, "You promised me the best party."

"Oh man," he says, "It's gonna be great. Everyone's going to be there."

Johanna bites down on momentary panic, twists her voice into something light and teasing. "You didn't invite any other Victors, did you?" she asks, and he gasps, mock-offended.

"Of course not!" he says, "I just don't see the appeal, honestly, it's such blatant status-shopping, I mean really." Johanna can practically hear the eye-roll over the phone. "You're the only one, my dear."

"Good," Johanna says, a little pouty to cover up the relief. Better this way.

"Come over!" he says, "I bet you're bored, hotels are just the pits all alone."

And there's what she's been looking for. "Send a car, will you?" she asks.

"Oh you poor thing, you're stranded!" Johanna rolls her eyes. Good thing he throws good parties, this kid is fucking ridiculous otherwise. "Of course, I'll get someone to come right away!"

"Great," Johanna says, and she really does mean it. "I'll be dressed and ready." She lets her voice drop to almost a purr. "Can't wait to see you," she says, "It's been way too long."

"Oh fuck," he says, "Don't get me in trouble before the party even starts, Jo."

Ha. Still got it. "We'll see," she says, and laughs before cutting the call.

The dress is perfect. Dark, shimmery, barely-there, fits like a second skin. There's a warm coat to throw over it that will look great on someone's floor later, if all goes according to plan. She's sick of being alone, and there's no point trying to be careful anymore, so if Julius and his friends want her to have the best time possible in the Capitol the way they're always telling her, then fuck it, she deserves some fun.

Julius kisses her cheeks when she gets out of the car, and she grins and traps him for a real kiss that leaves him flushed and gasping and swatting at her, completely ineffectual and not at all sincere.

She hasn't ever been to his actual house before, for all that they've been partying together practically since she won. Somehow they both knew going home together was across some invisible line, but who cares about lines anymore.

"Nothing fancy," he warns her, opening the door, and she doesn't roll her eyes because there's nobody to share the joke with, but seriously? It's a long narrow row house, everything shiny and chrome with hard oak floors that she knows for a fact cost a fortune. The furniture's pushed to the edges of the room, there's already dance music pumping through the speakers, and a handful of people are sitting on couches passing an elaborate water pipe, a cloud of smoke rising above them.

Once she's gotten a tour of the place they take places on a chair, Johanna perching on the arm, leaning against Julius. When the pipe comes to her she breathes deep, blows the sweet-smelling smoke up toward the ceiling and feels something inside her unwind.

She doesn't keep count, or track of time, just slides close against Julius, lets him pass her drinks, bites of food, pull her out to dance, slide a pill into her mouth with his tongue.

She's been trying to block out the taste of ash and dust and gasoline, the smell of moist earth on fresh graves and the President's snake-smile on the television screen in her mentor's house, giving her his condolences on the "accident." Trying to forget the meeting in his office, her hands still shaking with terror and power and blood under her nails, when he told her she was clearly unable to control herself, was a liability, would no longer be "permitted" to see clients. The last words she said to her dad before taking the train in for the post-Tour celebrations--they'd been arguing, he'd been telling her she should take it easy, and when he'd said he loved her, she'd snapped "you don't even know me," and turned to board the train--and a couple days later he was dead because she couldn't toe the line.

It's been stabbing into her, all of it, for weeks, spinning in her head like a saw blade, churning, acid, in her stomach, and she hasn't been able to drown it out, until now.

And now her head's spinning for other reasons, and if she's not dancing with Julius she's dancing with someone else pressed against her and the touch lights up her brain like fireworks, and the lights are flashing and the music pounding, up through her feet and down from her ears and it's swirling colors and an overload of sensation and there's no past, no future, nothing outside this room, just a screaming, intense _now_. And when the feeling starts to fade she finds Julius and kisses him hard and whispers "More," in his ear, and then bites down on his earlobe and pulls.

When the sun comes up she's in a bed with Julius and another girl whose name she doesn't know and she's lost track of everything she thought was important, tangled up in sheets and bodies, and they're smoking again, basking in the afterglow and trying to find a way to fall asleep.

She can't bear to imagine this ending, going back to her room, back to Seven, so she doesn't, just takes long, deep draws on the pipe and nuzzles into Julius's throat until he barks out a sharp laugh that's grating against the softness everywhere else.

"Damn, Johanna," he says, pulling away a bit, "Guess I heard right about you."

"What'd you hear," she says, and her heart speeds up in her chest but the panic is far away and hazy.

He laughs again, pulls the other girl closer, running fingers through her hair. "Heard you were wild," he says, his smile showing teeth. "Too much to handle."

"You saying you can't handle me?" Johanna asks, mocking.

"I'm saying fucking chill, shit, you gotta come down sometime." He empties the pipe, leans over the other girl to set it down beside the bed, letting his fingers trace over the curve of her breasts on the way back.

"Fine," Johanna says, sighing, slides down from sitting.

The other two fall asleep finally, but Johanna's still wide-eyed and awake, and increasingly desperate to move. Finally she gives up, finds a towel to wrap around her, and goes to search for her clothes. 

She calls a taxi from the house phone once she finds them, goes back to her hotel in a daze, exhausted, on-edge, frustrated, lies in her bed and turns on the TV for something to fill the silence. It's a stupid gossip channel, spouting stupid shit about people nobody cares about, and she watches until her brain finally gives up and she slides into a restless sleep.

\--

She wakes up too soon, ash in her throat and the echo of a scream in her ears, heart pounding too fast, too hard, like it'll beat out of her chest. Sobs in half-remembered terror, sitting with her head in her hands, and then goes to take a scalding-hot shower.

And it's just getting dark, and she needs out of here, away, so she yanks her hair up on top of her head, pulls on a dress and boots and does her makeup fast and sloppy. Knows she looks a mess, heads down for the kind of bar that won't care.

It's not till she's there, till she's halfway through her first drink that she can relax, flirt half-intentionally with the bartender, order food she's got a hope in hell of keeping down. Two drinks in and the food's gone and she feels human, more or less, and scrolls through names in her phone, gives up.

Heads for a club she knows, the kind clients would take her to when they wanted to be edgy, wanted pictures taken of them fucking her in dark corners or making out on the dance floor. It's early still, but the music's loud and the place is starting to get crowded and she knows how to watch a crowd, how they move, find dealers without asking around and risking someone recognizing her.

The guy she goes up to does recognize her, smiles slow and wicked after a half-second pause. "Johanna Mason," he says. "Didn't know you were in town." Johanna sighs, theatrically, rolls her eyes.

"What've you got to make a boring night a little more interesting?" she asks, putting on her best flirtatious smirk.

He slips his hand into a pocket, comes up with a pill between his fingers and flips it onto his palm like a magician's trick. "These are fun," he says. Johanna reaches into her bra for cash, and he shakes his head. "Nah, take it," he says, depositing it on her palm. "Never partied with a Victor before."

Johanna grins, slips it under her tongue, cocks her hand on her hip. "Don't like Victors?" she asks.

He laughs. "Out of my price range," he shrugs. "Can't get time with anyone interesting unless you know someone."

Johanna fake-pouts. "I'm not interesting?" she whines.

"Oh, you're interesting all right," he says, "just never seen you here on your own before."

She laughs, flings her arms wide. "All by my lonesome tonight," she says.

He raises an eyebrow, calculating, hungry eyes sweeping her up and down. "We'll have to see about that," he says, and Johanna knows when to quit while she's ahead, so she grins at him, spins and disappears into the crowd.

He finds her later, when she's dancing with a girl whose skin feels firey-hot and whose fingers are twisting and pulling in Johanna's hair. He's watching them, offers them drinks, and they sit together on one of the couches, and Johanna laughs and drinks and dances and heads for the door as she feels herself coming down.

He intercepts her. "Leaving already?" he asks, and he's grinning and his eyes are brilliant blue rims around blown-wide pupils and he's watching her like a predator, and well, what's really waiting for her?

They leave together, and he hands her something different, and they walk through the lightening streets to the edge of town and out into a park, and watch the sun come up over the city, and she should be cold, but instead she just feels alive.

Whatever he gave her makes the leaves on the trees and the patterns in the bark dissolve into whorls and swirls and they lie there transfixed as the clouds change from orange to pink to white, as the sun rises higher in the sky. They spend the afternoon walking through the city and talking in low voices, the riotous colors somehow magical and meaningful.

But the magic starts to slide away like it always does, and they're just two people walking around the Capitol and the Capitol is the same place it's always been, all flash and no substance, and Johanna pulls away and he protests.

"Hey, I thought you were having a good time?" He sounds whiny and arrogant like everyone in this stupid city and Johanna snaps.

"I was," she says, shrugs. "Not anymore." She turns in what she's pretty sure is the direction of her hotel, walks away without looking back.

By the time she finds her hotel she's just mad, at herself, at the Capitol, at what's-his-name who thought she was going to stick around, and it's pathetic, all of it, and it's ridiculous, and she doesn't even know what the fuck she's doing here except killing time.

But hey, she doesn't have anything better to do, and at least she's having fun, right?

She goes up to her room and showers, and as she's getting out her phone rings. "Johanna, what the fuck?"

"Hello to you too, Blight," she says, sarcastic, yanking a comb through wet hair.

"You disappeared, I've been trying to get ahold of you all day."

"I was bored, got invited to the Capitol."

"I thought you weren't..."

"Not by the President," Johanna snaps. "By a guy I know."

There's a long silence, as though Blight can't comprehend why anyone would want her enough to invite her all the way from Seven. Fuck him, anyway.

"When are you coming back?" he asks, and earlier she was thinking about getting on the night train, but fuck him, fuck Seven, there's nothing there but snow and trees.

"When I damn well feel like it," she says. "Did Ila tell you to call?"

"I saw you on TV, Jo," he says, quiet. "At some club. He didn't have to tell me. And he's been trying to call you himself, since yesterday."

Johanna scowls. "I'm fine," she says, "It's none of your business."

Blight sighs over the phone. "Okay," he says. "I'll tell Ila I talked to you so he stops worrying."

"You do that," she snaps, ends the call and tosses the phone onto the bed.

She hates the fucking comedown with club drugs, leaves her edgy and pissed off as though it's payback for having a good time for fucking once. Can't they invent something to fix this?

Or at least something so she can sleep, shit, she tries closing her eyes but there's no way that's going to happen. She paces the room, checks the time, shrugs and calls Julius. He'll either have something to entertain her or something to knock her out.

He's heading out for dinner and drinks. "We just got in the car!" he says, "We'll pick you up!"

She can't eat anything, but they smoke in the car and a couple drinks take the edge off. At least they don't ask her to make conversation, they're all gossiping about people she doesn't know, so she sits back and tries to relax.

They're going someplace classy after, and Johanna feels broken-glass-sharp and wildly out of place, and she must be acting really strange because Julius notices and pulls her into a corner. "What's wrong?" he asks, brow furrowed in picturesque concern. "Are you okay?"

Johanna swallows. She needs to not snap at him. "Fine," she grits out. "On edge." He looks at her a little more carefully, considering. "You ought to sleep," he says, and she can't not bark out a harsh laugh.

"Wish I could," she says, shrugging with one shoulder.

"Come on," he says, "Dance with me, relax, when we drop you off I'll give you something."

He confers with the bartender, hands her something that somehow manages to smooth out the brittle edges enough that she can fake it, slide into a Victor's persona and if not really enjoy herself, at least not want to take everyone's head off.

And sure enough, when she gets out of the car he slips something into her hand and smiles. "Take care now," he says, and she rolls her eyes and goes upstairs. Crawls into bed, takes the pills, and passes the fuck out.

When she wakes up she's got a pounding headache and all the lights hurt and the very idea of the Capitol makes her want to puke. She doesn't even get out of bed to call Victor Affairs, tells them to pack up everything for her or throw it all away because she doesn't give a fuck. Everything in here she could wear is terrible, except the soft pajamas that're still folded on the dresser, so she pulls those on, shoves her feet into the least offensive pair of shoes she can find, even if they are knee-high black boots, and pulls on her coat.

But of fucking course there are photographers waiting to snap pictures of her getting into the car. And she refuses to let them see her like this, like she's weak. There's a bathroom in the lobby. So she strips out of her pants, pulls her hair back, cleans up her face the best she can, and wraps her long coat around her. The boots are fine, nobody can see the shirt, and she balls up the pants and slides them into the pocket of her coat.

She has to laugh at herself, day-old smudged makeup and no pants, but she can grin and fake it with the best of them, at least long enough to get to the train. And nobody will be there to see her in Seven.

She's wrong about that, turns out. Ila's at the station, with his dilapidated truck, and he looks her over, fancy coat, pajamas and boots, hair and face she's sure are a wreck. But he doesn't say a word until they drive up to her house, dark, empty, cold, and as she reaches for the handle he clears his throat.

"I--" he starts, then "You--"

"It's fine." Johanna snaps, still facing the door. "You can't fucking do anything, it's fine."

There's a pause. "OK," he says, finally. "See you around?" He's hesitant, like always, and she can steamroll him even now.

"Bye Ila," she says, turning to him and flashing a smile. "Thanks for the ride."

He flinches, doesn't say anything as she pushes the door open and walks to the house.

\--

Johanna wakes up to someone pounding on her door.

She ignores it at first, because getting up seems like entirely too much work. But whoever it is doesn't go away, so finally she yanks the door open, wrapped in a bathrobe.

"What do you _want_?" she snaps, at Blight, as it turns out.

He grins at her. "Thought you might be bored, want to come chop some firewood."

"Why the _fuck_ would I want to do that?" she asks.

"You have a fireplace," he says, shrugging.

"What makes you think I would want to start a fire in my house on purpose," Johanna snaps at him. She regrets it almost immediately, didn't mean it like that, but Blight takes it in stride.

"Okay, you can chop wood for my fireplace."

"Why would I do that?"

Blight glances past her to the empty bottle on the table next to the couch. "Well, I bought you that scotch, for one thing."

Johanna raises an eyebrow. "Didn't know I was meant to pay that back."

He glares at her, picks up the ax he's leaned against the doorway. "Come fucking chop wood," he says, swinging it towards her. "I know you know how to use an ax."

Now it's her turn to glare. "Fuck you, Blight," she says, but she grabs the ax out of his hand.

"Might want pants," he says, unfazed, and she looks down. Right. Pants.

"Wait here," she says, stomps up the stairs.

All new clothes of course, but someone knows her size and someone saw fit to buy fucking work pants in that size and damn him, what kind of bullshit is this?

She stomps back down the stairs, out the door, pulls the door shut behind her and swings the ax onto her shoulder. "Let's go," she says, follows him out behind his house.

She stops dead when she gets there.

"You have got to be fucking kidding me," she says. The whole back side of the house is stacked with neatly quartered firewood. There's enough there to last five winters, probably, since it's not like any of them actually rely on firewood for heat.

"Nope," Blight says, heads out to a bare patch in the middle of the lawn, next to a pile of sawed sections of log. He hefts one upright, splits it down the middle, into quarters, tosses the quarters to one side. "Race you?" he asks, with a lopsided grin.

Johanna raises an eyebrow. "I know what you're trying to do," she says. "This is some kind of weird way to make me feel better."

"Don't know about that," Blight says. "It's just what I do, when nothing else seems worth dragging my ass up for."

She glares at him. "Fuck you," she says, on principle. "You're full of shit."

"Maybe so," he says, grabs another log. "But I've got two," he continues, swinging the ax with the easy rhythm of long practice. "And you've got none," he continues, swinging the ax again. "So I'm not sure I'm the one full of shit."

She stands, watching him toss the sections to one side, arms crossed over her chest, then, as he leans over to grab another log she hisses. "Dammit, Blight," and grabs a log.

The ax feels heavy, unfamiliar in her hands, her palms strangely smooth against the haft of it. But she remembers the rhythm, hauls it up and lets the weight of it guide it down until it bites into the heart of the wood.

Before long she's breathing fast and her arms ache, but Blight's still chopping wood with that easy, steady rhythm. She's shed her coat, her sweater, and so has he, and she cannot believe she's doing this but she doesn't actually have a reason not to.

Finally her arms simply give out, refuse to lift the ax anymore, and her palms are ripped open and her back hurts and she feels, objectively, like shit, but she's grinning as she lets the ax settle on the ground and straightens up.

"You fucker," she says, and she'd punch him but that'd mean moving her arms.

He lets his ax fall to the ground. "Beat you," he says. Johanna feels her mouth curl up, a real, if exhausted, smile.

"Yeah, but it's all your wood, so you're going to give me a beer anyway," she says, collecting her sweater and pulling it on as the sweat cools on her back and leaves her shivering.

"Will do," he says, heading inside, and she grabs her coat and follows.


End file.
